This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.
To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems.
Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

THE Southern Baptists, 14 million strong, are not a happy family. An increasingly bitter schism between the fundamentalists and the more moderate members of the faith may necessitate divorce within the next decade. Joe Edward Barnhart, a moderate Southern Baptist and a professor of philosophy and religion at North Texas State University, explains the doctrinal divisions in ''The Southern Baptist Holy War,'' a well-written book that will not endear him to the fundamentalists.

At the heart of the matter is their commitment to inerrancy, a belief that the Bible is literally true and contains no false statements that are not corrected within the Bible itself. Many inerrants reject the possibility that biblical authors might have embellished or reworked material.

Since 1979, the inerrants have controlled the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention, which finances and controls its umbrella projects, including the six Southern Baptist seminaries. Mr. Barnhart believes the seminaries are in danger because the inerrants fear independent scholarship. Some seminary students are exhilarated by the complexity of the Bible. Others lose their faith when they confront such problems as trying to determine what the Bible says. Most of the New Testament was written in Greek and one Greek word may have many meanings. Mr. Barnhart, who received a Master of Divinity degree from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston University, writes, ''Anyone who claims simply to 'read the text itself,' as if reading bathroom scales, is resting on the naive presumption that the human mind can be turned into a blank sheet (the tabula rasa) across which truth simply writes itself so long as the mind remains innocent.''

An inerrant who concedes biblical ambiguity steps onto the slippery slope that leads to the loss of faith. ''Already there exists, among the scholars who question the inerrancy and absolute reliability of the Gospels,'' Mr. Barnhart explains, ''a bewildering diversity of conjectures of what the real Jesus was like, what he taught and did, if indeed he existed in the first place. . . . It is understandable, therefore, that many believers fear that without flawless Scriptures to support it, Christianity may eventually be regarded as just another ancient mystery religion doomed to fade into the night.'' Thus, independent scholarship is profoundly threatening to the inerrants.

Beyond the first chapter, in which Mr. Barnhart demonstrates an unfortunate attachment to alliteration (''terrible ecclesiastical tornado,'' ''theological thunderstorm''), the writing sharpens, occasionally to a stiletto point. The author punctures ''Christian hedonism'' as taught by the motivational lecturer Zig Ziglar of Dallas and his minister, the Rev. W. A. Criswell of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, one of the largest and wealthiest churches in the nation. He says ''the danger threatening their movement is that it will turn into a Baptist Yuppie Club of narcissistic self-indulgers, people who imagine that they have earned all their good fortune and that those at the bottom of the heap deserve to be there either because God did not see fit to endow them with comparable talents or because they have not tried to help themselves.'' He accuses the inerrants of racism and sexism: ''For many years, a number of preachers like Jerry Falwell and W. A. Criswell raised no prophetic voice against the known brutalities of racism or the unjust treatment of women. Now suddenly they have turned into bleeding hearts over almost microscopic zygotes. . . . Many women believe that the crocodile tears for the fetus serve mostly to distract from the guilt that these preachers bear because of their past racial bigotry and their present male chauvinism.''

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

While the author prescribes tolerance for the feuding Southern Baptists, he obviously is uncomfortable under the same roof as the inerrants. Many Baptists predict that divergent world views will force a separation between fundamentalists and moderates before the end of the century. But Mr. Barnhart thinks the Southern Baptists ''may be too rich and too powerful for divorce.'' With more than 37,000 churches, they form the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. In 1983-1984, the Southern Baptist Convention contributed $231 million to support six seminaries and 67 colleges, student ministers on more than 1,000 campuses, radio and televison programs, and 3,700 missionaries in the United States and 3,600 abroad. This is above and beyond the $2.5 billion disbursed yearly by individual churches. MR. BARNHART sees the gap widening as the two sides talk across each other, but he is not yet reconciled to separation. He proposes that for two years the Southern Baptists issue a convention-wide biweekly publication devoted to questions of doctrine, to determine exactly what each side thinks and whether their views can be reconciled. ''If the Inerrancy Party leaders refuse this direct challenge, they will lend credence to the charge that their real concern all along has been not theology but power,'' he asserts.

But how can the moderates possibly coexist with the virulent form of intolerance exhibited by the likes of the evangelist R. L. Hymers? He is founder of the Fundamentalist Army and a graduate of the Southern Baptists' Golden Gate Seminary. Mr. Barnhart quotes from a sermon delivered by Mr. Hymers in Los Angeles in 1985: ''The liberal theological professor, the prostitute, the drug addict, and the murderer - all agree on one thing. . . . All agree that the Bible is not the word of God. Have you ever noticed that? Did you ever wonder why? They're all sinners. I love to say that. I know it's true. I've been around, baby. I've been on Hollywood Boulevard. And I've been at Golden Gate Seminary - a marked similarity.''

Mr. Barnhart believes his church needs ''a political or social mechanism that respects the right of church members to be challenged by biblical scholarship.'' But the resulting clash between belief and knowledge may be intolerable to the majority of inerrants.

A version of this review appears in print on February 1, 1987, on Page 7007016 of the National edition with the headline: CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS. Today's Paper|Subscribe